He sat up, holding his head in his hands, trying to stop the shaking, to get a grip on himself.
A nightmare, yes. Just a dream. A bad dream. Only once, almost ten years ago, it’d been real.
There was a Hell, he told himself, and he was in it. He got up, went into the bathroom, closed the door and switched on the light. He steadied himself on the sink and looked into the mirror.
It was a strong face on a strong body; a Caucasian complexion but strong Negroid features and a bush of thick, wiry hair now tinged prematurely with gray. The face was lined, etched in with experiences he could not forget; his brown eyes looked old, empty, hollow.
When would it let him alone, this past that haunted him? What did it want? What sort of penance would sponge away the guilt?
Look what’s happened to you, Sam Cornish, he thought bitterly. Ten years older than your age of thirty-four and growing older at twice the clip every night. A hundred years in Hell already served—how many more to go?
How young and bright and starry-eyed Sam Cornish was when he was alive, he thought. Black power and the Revolution and all that. Black power! He snorted in derision. Too white for the Blacks, too black for the whites, but just right for the Revolution. Read Marx and Mao and protest march and all that shit.
But to most of his contemporaries that was passe, lip service. Hedonism replaced the Revolution before he’d gotten there. Blow pot, disco dance, go all night in bed with Suzy, blue jeans and bennies…
Suzy. There she was again. The Revolution would sweep away decadence. Come the Revolution and all would be perfect. Society was rotten, capitalism was poison, they’d drugged the world into submission. They had to be awakened.
He’d believed it, all of it. He’d drunk it in like an alcoholic in a liquor store.
Seven or eight committed “patriots,” a tight little cell. Hit a bank here, a bank there for money. It was easy. Just pass a note. Pick small banks, never be ambitious. George with his chemicals. Steal some weapons here, some explosives there. Even that damned mortar from a National Guard unit in summer camp. Easy. Fun.
Some notes to the papers, a fancy name, the Synergistic Commune Action Brigade, some bombs in harmless places. Everybody so sure of the Revolution nobody even stopped for a moment to ask what the Revolution was, who would run it, and other things like that. It was “us” against “them,” kiddies playing revolutionaries against the fascists.
Until that plane. Three hundred eighty-six dead innocent people, and the SCAB celebrated a great victory.
Somehow, deep down, he’d kidded himself.
Somehow he’d rationalized, told himself that the Revolution was real, the Revolution would come, that what he was doing was building a better world.
Three hundred eighty-six dead people. And they danced and laughed in their joy.
Three hundred eighty-six dead people.
Building a better world for who? And what sort of world?
There’d been 387 casualties in that plane crash, the extra one being Sam Cornish.
He’d run and run and still it pursued him. Here, at Sky Forest, he’d stopped physically, and in the strong-man work of the commune and its unquestioning ways he’d worked it off, put it away from him, become Joe Conway, tapped maple trees in these beautiful Vermont mountains, cut cordwood, built buildings and dug post holes for fences, and he’d dropped out.
Except now, except in the night, when the ghost of Sam Cornish still haunted him. Dope didn’t work, pills didn’t work, nothing worked.
He was checking out the site they’d picked for a new stable for the horses, farther away from the main buildings, deciding how much wood would be needed, how construction would have to proceed, when the man came out of the trees toward him. He turned and looked at the stranger curiously; unknowns were rare up here, and this fellow seemed particularly out of place in suit and tie and tailored overcoat.
He waited, wondering, for the newcomer to reach him.
The man stopped a little away from where he stood and looked him over. “Hello, Mr. Cornish,” he said in a soft southern accent that was as out of place here as the man himself.
Sam Cornish froze, ice shooting through him. He’d been here so many years that he no longer feared capture or exposure, never even thought of it any more—and here it was.
“Joe Conway’s the name,” he responded nervously.
The man smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Cornish. I’m not here to arrest you. We could have done that years ago.”
Something twisted within him; he wasn’t certain whether to attack or run, so he stood where he was. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Mr. Cornish, we deal in the public safety. We try and remove threats to it. If they cease to be threats, well, there’s a lot of other folks still menacing the public who need attention. Some of your old buddies, for example, got to Cuba. They sat there on their fannies in shacks cutting sugar cane and singing revolutionary songs in Spanish. Well and good. Let them stay in their own self-imposed prison. It’s cheaper. You came here. We traced you here inside of a few months, and let you be first because we hoped that some of your lovable friends would join you. After a while it was pretty clear that you had had second thoughts about the revolution, and were in your own version of a Cuban sugar cane field. We picked up Granger, as you probably know. He told us you tried to stop the plane attack, and left when they carried it out. So we left you here. Cheaper and convenient. Of course, we keep an eye on you and hundreds of others like you just in case, or in case some of your more dangerous friends decide to renew old friendships, but that’s all.”
His emotions were in turmoil, jumbled and confused. Somehow what the man said made sense, but it was, in its own way, more depressing than being a hounded fugitive.
“So why tell me this now?” he asked. “Or are you finally getting around to the leftovers?”
The other man shrugged. “I told you I wasn’t here to arrest you. I want to make a proposition to you. If you say no, well, then, that’s that. Business as usual. Stick to this commune and this lifestyle and you’ll never see us again.”
This was more confusing than before. “What sort of a proposition?” he asked suspiciously, not trusting anything the man was saying.
“You’re pretty cut off here,” the man noted. “Do you know about the Wilderness Organism?”
He nodded slowly. “We get the papers. Lots of talk about it, naturally. There are a lot of small towns in Vermont.”
“And you’ve heard that the thing is a laboratory-created disease? That someone is planting it?”
“I heard,” he said, not sure where this was leading.
“Suppose I said that we just shot Jim Foley trying to plant the disease?” the man continued.
Cornish’s mouth dropped. “Foley!” Suddenly his mind raced. “Any other—”
“No, no Suzanne Martine yet,” the man replied, guessing his question. “Wouldn’t be surprised, though.”
He relaxed a bit, strangely relieved but unable to figure out why.
“Mr. Cornish, I’d like you to come down to the village with me,” the man told him. “I want to show you a couple of movies, that’s all. At the end I’ll explain all this, and you can say no, no thanks, and walk out of there and back here. No hassles, no conditions, no blackmail. Will you do it for me? Just to humor me?”
The old suspicions were back. “You’re not just looking for an easy arrest, are you?”
The man sighed. “Mr. Cornish, I wouldn’t have to trick you and you know it. Come on. I promise nothing else will happen.”
He gave in, his curiosity overcoming his massive doubts. “Why not?” he said, resigned.